SAN DIEGO ---- Every day, more and more people come out of the woodwork.

Every day, phone calls and emails by the dozens flood the offices of the new United States Football League, which for now are humbly housed within the office space of a downtown law firm that employs one of the fledgling league's partners.

There was the longtime Houston Astros vice president whose first job out of college was selling season tickets for the Houston Gamblers of the original USFL and who expressed interest in getting involved in the revival. There was the Canadian Football League scout who wants to work for a league that is still months away from hiring.

Dick Coury, the USFL's first coach of the year in 1983, requested a meeting about returning to the sidelines. Anthony Carter and Marcus Dupree, former USFL stars who went on to play in the NFL, both have reached out to lend a hand. Even Drew Brees, who was only 4 years old when the USFL was founded, has contacted the league about putting a team in his native Austin, Texas.

"There are so many people who either fondly remember going to games or worked for the league to help them get where they are today," said Jaime Cuadra, the head of a San Diego company that's trying to resurrect the USFL. "This league only was around for three years, and the impact it made on the football landscape was tremendous."

Blazing into existence on the heels of the NFL strike in 1982, the USFL was a professional spring league backed by big money and armed with big ambition. In a scenario that would be unthinkable today, it signed three consecutive Heisman Trophy winners (Georgia running back Herschel Walker, Nebraska running back Mike Rozier and Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie) and also launched the pro careers of future Hall of Famers such as Jim Kelly, Steve Young and Reggie White.

Chargers general manager A.J. Smith was a scout in the USFL. Chargers executive Ed McGuire worked in the league office. In the twilight of his playing days, ex-San Diego State star and current Aztecs assistant coach Brian Sipe was a quarterback for the USFL's New Jersey Generals.

The Generals were owned by none other than Donald Trump, whom history remembers as the league's villain for his push to move the USFL season to the fall and the ensuing decision in 1986 to sue the NFL for violating antitrust laws. The USFL won the suit but was awarded an embarrassing sum of $3, and when the league folded the next year, it had lost about $163 million.

Now Cuadra and his colleagues want to bring it back, trading on the USFL nostalgia that's still powerful in sports fandom while avoiding the pitfalls and excess that caused the league ---- and others like it over the last three decades ---- to fail. A 52-year-old San Diego entrepreneur, Cuadra formed a company called EndZone Sports Management last year to buy the rights to the USFL name, and his goal is to put together an eight-team league in non-NFL cities that will play a 14-game season starting next March.

"We've gotten such a great response from people," he said. "I would say 95 percent of it has been positive."

Cuadra goes out of his way to emphasize that the USFL 2.0 has no intention of competing with the NFL, the 800-pound gorilla of American sports. Rather, it aspires to serve as a developmental league for the more than 1,000 players who are members of NFL teams in some fashion every year but who never crack a regular-season roster. USFL organizers haven't met with the NFL since the announcement of the league's launching in February, but they hope for a collegial relationship that gives NFL franchises unfettered access to USFL players and resources.

Cuadra was looking to break into the sports industry when he learned that a Los Angeles businessman named Michael Dwyer had been trying to get the USFL back off the ground for four years, with little success beyond a dedicated Facebook following. From the Dwyer team, Cuadra recruited Fred Biletnikoff Jr. ---- the son of the Hall of Fame receiver ---- and one of the duo's first moves was to reach out to Jim Steeg, the former Chargers executive who's better known as the man who built the Super Bowl into the world's biggest one-day sporting event.

Steeg liked the concept enough to sign on as an unpaid consultant to the league.

"It's the right time for something like this," Steeg said. "You've got the changes that took place in the NFL with the collective bargaining agreement, which limits offseason workouts. You've got the closing down of NFL Europe (a developmental league that ceased operations in 2007). You've got Fox talking about a new ESPN-like channel, you've got NBC having taken over Versus.

Steeg's clout helped attract former Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens executive James Bailey (a Solana Beach resident) and ex-NFL quarterback Jeff Garcia to the USFL's board of advisors, and the presence of his son in the league brought Biletnikoff on board as well. Between his long playing and coaching careers with the Raiders, Biletnikoff was a coach for the USFL's Oakland Invaders in 1985.

"What a catch Steeg has been for us," said Biletnikoff Jr., a longtime coach who's now the league's chief operating officer and vice president of football operations. "He brings so much to the table it's incredible."

After a series of conversations with potential ownership groups, Cuadra said the USFL's eight teams are likely to come from a group of cities that includes Austin, Akron, Ohio, Portland, Ore., Memphis, Tenn., Birmingham, Ala., Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Oklahoma City, Omaha, Neb., and Las Vegas. Orange County (league organizers toured Titan Stadium on the campus of Cal State Fullerton two weeks ago) and a to-be-determined site in South Florida are also under consideration.

Besides finalizing franchises and owners, the USFL's busy summer agenda includes the search for investors, coaches and a high-profile commissioner. The allocation of players would take place in November ---- via regional drafts, a national draft and tryout camps ---- with training camps convening early in 2013.

"By Sept. 1, we need to have everything in place, from facilities to cities to coaches," Cuadra said. "It's ambitious, but we have so many different people working on multiple parallel paths that we feel like we can all come to the middle at about the right time."

With the benefit of hindsight, Cuadra and his colleagues have examined the missteps made by past secondary football leagues and crafted their business plan so as not to repeat them. Unlike the original USFL, they won't try to infringe on the NFL's turf. Unlike the ill-fated XFL, they won't resort to gimmickry. Unlike NFL Europe, well, they won't play their games half a world away.

And unlike the United Football League ---- which is still alive and kicking, barely, with four teams remaining ---- they intend to be fiscally responsible. Whereas the UFL has lost a reported $120 million in its first three seasons (in part by paying sizable salaries to its commissioner and to former NFL coaches like Marty Schottenheimer, Denny Green and Jim Fassel), the USFL will employ a single-entity model in which players' and coaches' contracts are tightly controlled by the league office.

"It's about studying all those things that went wrong and figuring out what is the right path to make it succeed," Steeg said.

If the initial wave of reaction is any indication, the USFL is well on its way to success. The calls and emails keep coming: Marshall Faulk, Deion Sanders and Michael Irvin praising the idea. Ricky Williams offering to help Austin's bid to secure a team. Former pros Lincoln Kennedy and Chris Doleman seeking to contribute as advisors.

"All of them have been very supportive," Cuadra said. "They feel like there's a tremendous amount of talent out there that needs a place to play."